Chairman's New Year Message

Mon, 1st Jan 2018 10:20am

I hope you all had a peaceful and uplifting Christmas. It is, in many ways, a magical time of the year! However, it is also a time to acknowledge that life is a mixture of pain and pleasure and that very often the greatest pleasures and successes arise from making sacrifices; both for yourself and the greater good.

New Year – yes it provides an obvious and natural point in time to reflect the year's past events and, most importantly, to learn real lessons arising from mistakes made, from the way others do things and occasionally from doing things well and wanting to do them more often. All of this to help better shape you, your community and the future. Hard work ahead for us? Yes, but we can, collectively, enjoy the challenge!

My own timeline spans back not a full year, but to June. We have over this period made positive progress in several areas. Honest and intelligent hard work will always ultimately generate improvements. Yes, perseverance and patience are very much required and this is what I would ask for now more than anything else. Change is a process that is often painful at the start and messy (not Messi!) in the middle, but should ultimately result in positive results and pleasure.

I've mentioned previously that I am not one for standard, boring footballing clichés, so this New Year message comes in the form of a series of resolutions that should help us achieve our targets/objectives. So here they are… 10 is always a good number to work to! So let's, all of us, use our best endeavours to achieve the following:-

1. Make Clyde a positive, progressive club and Broadwood a happy footballing home.

Continue to work creatively with NLL over the next 12 months to deliver better sporting infrastructure.

Create conditions and a club culture that is conducive to good and strong management, innovative coaching and footballing performance.

Support the desire of all staff and players to learn and improve.

Be the club choice for good players wanting to enjoy success.

Be a footballing community with good strong core values; a family that cares for and supports everyone in it and the extended community.

2. Reach out and truly engage with the Cumbernauld Community and at the same time strengthen the Glasgow roots and rekindle the authentic affection and bonds that exist in the East End of Glasgow.

A generational reconnection to the club's historic heartland can be achieved concurrently with our growth and development in Cumbernauld (more to follow on this). We must continue, and in new ways, to actively engage with residents, businesses, community groups and schools within North Lanarkshire.

Help make Cumbernauld, Kilsyth, Croy and the surrounding areas healthier and happier communities. Encourage and nourish the youth engagement programme being delivered by the Clyde Foundation.

3. Develop further and stronger the key partnerships we have formed with North Lanarkshire Leisure, New College Lanarkshire, Scottish Rugby Union and others.

4. Be a club that is wholly accountable, responsible and accessible.

As chairman, I will make myself available for 30 minute consultations on a one-to-one or with small groups before every home game. I will be very happy to discuss any matter pertaining to the club.

5. Continue to raise standards of performance and conduct in all areas of the club.

6. Scale up our operations to achieve an optimum commercial income over the whole year, including during the close season, to service growth and higher levels of achievement.

Shop and online retail – the club now has complete control over this area (with more information to follow soon)

Sponsorship relationships – we will be working with the SPFL and we will be creating a new core Marketing Team (more to follow)

Build up business community partnerships (more to follow)

7. Create a new, key role within the club to work with and optimise the performance and outputs of the Board, part-time staff and the club's wonderful group of volunteers. This is integral to our strategy for growth and is one of our priorities currently.

8. Not being complacent or contemptuous.

Continue to remove impediments and negative tensions in and around the club, encouraging all to positively contribute towards Clyde FC being a better community club.

Work with good and talented people in shaping the club's contemporary purpose and constantly question what this is.

9. Grow our support - everyone can contribute to this. I would ask all of you to represent what Clyde is all about and encourage friends and family to either re-engage with the club or get involved for the first time. The timing is right for this to happen.

10. Continue to help those around us in need - we must always be a 'River of Good'!

We have broken a couple of - not wholly rewarding or headlining - footballing club records recently (five successive league draws and three back-to-back 0-0s ) which reflect the start of our process of positive change and embracing new ways. The last three months in particular have been somewhat challenging and staff at the club have responded very well to these challenges, demonstrating initiative and good judgment. We have good and strong people at the club!

January provides the opportunity to recruit some new faces, hopefully players with the character and capability that will improve the overall performance of the squad and our results. For a number of reasons, we are now an attractive club. Good players will want to play for Clyde, themselves, their teammates and the management. Players want to enjoy their football and winning is clearly a key element to this. We will continue to work hard and smart to create the conditions for this to happen.

Despite the disruption to matches and training recently, over the festive period the management and playing staff have demonstrated they are prepared to sacrifice and take on the pain in pursuit of the pleasures. This is positively refreshing and uplifting!

We will provide as much support as possible to the manager and the squad over the next month.

Finally, a huge thanks from the Board for all of your valued support. Remember, you are unique, so continue to seek ways of being unique!